Posted by
Andrews on Monday, October 26, 2009 12:21:00 AM
I was out today when I saw a fellow in a yarmulke and with the tassels of a tzitzit sticking out of the bottom of his shirt, nothing unusual in this area. However, it made me think, orthodox Jews are an unusual group as, unlike much of modern society, they have an easily recognized presence and a judgmental community, which enforces certain behaviors. A similar experience is found among recognizable minorities, blacks or Asians, for example, who worry about their public behavior as they fear their actions will reflect on their group. (Admittedly, not every member of a minority groups thinks this way, but in some ways this is one of the few positive outcomes of our group-based thinking about race.)
All of this made me think about the problems our culture faces. Earlier this week I wrote about our rude behavior, but I ignored one aspect. And that is the lack of any societal checks. You see, in the past, we had relatively cohesive social groups, towns, villages, large families, and so on, in which members were not afraid to shame one another, thus forcing members to avoid bad behavior and practice good behavior. Now, outside of some religions (Jews, Mormons, etc.) and some ethnic enclaves, such safeguards no longer exist.
However, even when society became more urbanized, there were still safeguards. If a child misbehaved, adults felt no problems chastising another adults' child. Likewise, when someone was acting in a clearly inappropriate way, it was not uncommon for someone to quietly (or sometimes not so quietly) inform the offender of this. Even without pre-established communities, society as a whole still felt the obligation to scold and praise when behavior crossed certain lines.
Now, with our non-judgmental, accepting society, where it is seen as the greatest faux pas to "impose your morality" on someone, we have no such safeguards. Few feel shame at public misbehavior, and even fewer feel obligated to correct that behavior. In some areas there are more remnants of the old judgmental society (often in much maligned "fly-over country"), but by and large the "progressive" tendency to refuse to judge has spread throughout the nation, removing any sense of shame, and any societal pressures to conform.
And that last word points out the other problem. In the past we also had a common culture.There were minorities within that culture, and subcultures, but in public they were expected to conform tot he common norms, regardless of their private behavior within their own culture. It was a simple system that ensured orderly social interactions and predictable behavior. It was not "oppressive" as some claim, no "culture police" would stop you from behaving as you wished in private, it was simply a check on public disorder. But, of course, as it "privileged the dominant culture"*, this too had to go, leaving us with the current chaos, with no common norms, no checks on behavior, and no incentives to behave properly.
This topic is clearly one that requires more than a short blurb. Originally I had started a post on this a few weeks ago, examining the behavior fo children and the unwillingness of adults to check even the worst behavior of children in their presence. And I may revisit that topic again. However, until I do get back to it, I just want to bring this to my readers' attention. It is basically just a specific application of what I discussed in "
In Defense of Standards"and "
Addenda to "In Defense of Standards"" and in all my essays on predictability, but with one essential piece. I think, above all else, the elimination of shame, of fear of being caught breaking social norms, has done more harm than many changes that are much better known and much more widely criticized.
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* Is there any uglier academic neologism than the use of privilege as a verb? It makes the colloquial use of disrespect as a verb seem also acceptable. Oh, wait, I forgot the techno-jargon use of "architect" as a verb, serving as a vague and misleading stand-in for both design and build, making confusing and ugly what could be made clear by using simple, everyday words. But I suppose if you are architecting a new jargon, you don't want to privilege the simple words, as that would disrespect your new jargon.